Third Jewish cemetery damaged in surge of US anti-Semitic acts

Vandals tumbled and defaced headstones at a Jewish cemetery in Rochester, New York, local officials confirmed Friday, the third such cemetery in the United States to suffer damage in a surge in apparent anti-Semitic acts. Meredith Dragon, chief executive of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester, said local police were not yet ready to determine whether the toppling of a dozen or more headstones in the Stone Road or Waad Hakolel Cemetery overnight Wednesday was an act of petty vandalism or a targeted hate crime. Nationally, a total of three cemeteries — the others in St Louis, Missouri and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — have now seen large numbers of overturned and broken headstones, and hundreds of bomb threats have been phoned in to Jewish community centers and day schools.